Doctor Oculus wasn’t created because I thought Birmingham desperately needed another opticians. There were already plenty of those, ranging from the very clinical to the sort of place where you half expect somebody to whisper the price of a frame while presenting it on a velvet cushion.
If that is what they’re aiming for, fair enough. It just never appealed to me.
I wanted to build the sort of opticians I would actually enjoy visiting, which conveniently also meant building somewhere I would enjoy spending most of my waking life. I wanted it to feel interesting without being intimidating, professional without being terribly serious about itself, and full of things that had found their way there for no particularly sensible reason.
The name was an early indication that this was unlikely to become a solemn luxury eyewear boutique.
People sometimes ask where Doctor Oculus came from, expecting a clever branding story involving Latin, ophthalmology and several weeks of strategic meetings. In reality, a friend started calling me Doctor Oculus when I was studying to become a dispensing optician because I had developed an irritating habit of talking about glasses long after everybody else had lost the will to participate.
I liked it, so I stole it.
The name made me laugh then and it still does now. More importantly, it made it difficult for the practice to disappear too far up its own backside before the doors had even opened.
We don’t take ourselves seriously, but we take what we do very seriously. I don’t think those things are in conflict. Being relaxed about ourselves gives us more room to concentrate on the bits that actually matter, such as whether somebody can see properly, whether their glasses fit and whether they understand what they are spending their money on.
Buying glasses can already be a peculiar experience. Most people are not entirely sure what half the lenses do, whether the frame they have chosen really suits them or whether the question they are about to ask is so catastrophically stupid that everyone in the building will remember it forever.
It almost certainly isn’t.
I have never understood why the surroundings should make that feeling worse. Nobody needs to feel that they have wandered into a private members’ club and must demonstrate sufficient knowledge of obscure Belgian eyewear before being allowed to touch anything.
I’d rather somebody came in, looked around, relaxed a bit and thought, “This isn’t quite what I expected from an opticians.”
There was never a detailed plan for how Doctor Oculus should look. Nobody sat down with a mood board and decided the practice needed exactly this many plants, a particular ratio of odd objects to useful equipment and several shelves of things that are difficult to explain but apparently impossible to remove.
It just happened.
Friends brought things in. Customers gave us objects they thought belonged here. I found bits in antique shops, markets, holidays and various places where buying them seemed like an excellent decision at the time. Some have a story. Others have been here long enough that nobody can remember where they came from, including me.
If I had to empty the practice tomorrow and recreate it somewhere else, I don’t think I could. I could move the furniture and copy the layout, but it would look like somebody had tried to recreate Doctor Oculus rather than actually being Doctor Oculus.
The plants arrived in much the same way. There were only a few to begin with, then somebody bought another, and then another appeared because apparently a healthy plant is capable of attracting several more. At some point the workshop became part opticians and part jungle.
I now arrive early enough to water everything before the first appointment, which was not mentioned anywhere in the dispensing optician job description. I’m still not convinced I’m a particularly gifted plant daddy, but most of them remain alive and several have become alarmingly ambitious, so I’m counting it as a success.
People often say the practice feels calm. I don’t think that came from a clever piece of retail psychology. Nothing here is trying terribly hard to impress anybody, and perhaps that helps. There is no luxurious theatre before somebody presents a pair of glasses at an unnecessarily dramatic angle. There are just frames, lenses, workshop equipment, plants, things we like and enough time to talk properly.
That probably sums up my attitude towards eyewear too.
I have never cared about selling the most expensive frame in the room merely because it is the most expensive. Equally, I have no interest in discovering how cheaply a pair of glasses can be produced before they become technically disposable.
The enjoyable part is getting the whole thing right.
That could mean making a frame here in Digbeth, choosing something brilliant from one of the independent designers we stock or tailoring a lens around somebody who has spent years assuming glasses were always supposed to be a bit disappointing.
There usually isn’t one universally correct answer. That is why the job remains interesting.
A prescription tells us what power somebody needs, but it doesn’t tell us what their glasses should be. It doesn’t explain that they spend all day between several computer screens, drive through the night, spend hours blasting fools on GTA, read in bed at an angle no lens designer could reasonably predict or need one pair of glasses to perform seven unrelated jobs.
That part needs a conversation, and conversations are much easier when nobody feels that they are being hurried through a sales procedure.
Digbeth felt like the natural home for that sort of practice. Not because somebody had identified it as the next fashionable retail destination in a report, but because it already had the sort of people and businesses I wanted Doctor Oculus to sit among.
None of us are really from here, but we chose here.
There are artists, makers, restorers, designers, printers, brewers, jewellers, musicians and all manner of people doing things that make very little sense if the only purpose of work is to follow the quickest route towards wealth. They are here because they care about the thing they are doing and enjoy being around other people who feel much the same.
Digbeth has also spent a lot of its recent life in a state of glorious inconvenience. Roads move, buildings vanish, tram works appear without ever seeing a tram and reaching a business you can already see occasionally requires the navigational abilities of an arctic explorer. The small businesses here have carried on regardless, helping each other and bringing warmth and creativity to a corner of Birmingham that had been neglected for a very long time.
That felt like home immediately.
Doctor Oculus was established in 2022, but it was also established in the face of adversity in 2022. The first practice was a pop-up made from cork, plumbing parts, coat hangers and whatever else could be persuaded to display spectacles without collapsing. It was not slick, but it was ours, and people seemed to understand what we were trying to do.
The permanent practice is more accomplished now. The workshop is better, the equipment is rather more sophisticated and considerably fewer things are held together with optimism. The basic idea hasn’t changed.
We have the freedom to make, create, fix, experiment and have fun. Our workshop is also the showroom, the clinic and a social space. You can see the tools, the machines and whatever unfinished thing is currently occupying far too much of my attention. Nothing happens behind an impenetrable wall where the mysterious spectacle process must remain hidden from civilians.
I have never liked the word exclusive. It suggests that some people are welcome while others ought to remain outside admiring the frontage, which feels like a strange ambition for an opticians. Sooner or later, nearly everybody needs help with their eyes, and nobody should have to prove they are sufficiently fashionable, wealthy or knowledgeable before asking for it.
There is no fancy coffee machine. If fortune smiles upon you, there may be a tin of obscure foreign pop in the fridge. The plants are nice, the music may be questionable and the objects on the shelves make me happy, but none of those things is really the point.
The point is that somebody can come in without knowing anything about glasses, ask whatever they need to ask and leave understanding them a little better. Ideally, they also leave wearing something that suits their face, works for their life and makes them feel excellent.
Doctor Oculus is an opticians, but that isn’t the interesting bit.
The interesting bit is what an opticians can become when nobody tells it that it has to be normal.